Modern Tongues – Glossolalia

The question that first comes to mind is, what is the modern phenomenon of tongues? Is it a real language like the one in Scripture? Is it the very same experience we read about in the NT? What is the history of this practice? If there was a break in this experience for hundreds and hundreds of years, how can we know that this experience is the same one the NT Christians experienced? If modern tongues is not what modern Pentecostals claim it is, then what should our disposition be toward them in the Christian church? Is modern tongue-speaking heresy, demonic, serious error, or just an ancillary issue over which we can agree to disagree? I think that in order to answer this last question adequately, we must take not only examine the Pentecostal practice of tongues, but the Pentecostal belief and doctrine about tongues. These must be considered together. Far too many modern sympathizers separate the modern practice of tongues from the modern doctrine of tongues and only then subject it to evaluation and comment. That is evaluating tongues in a vacuum. The doctrine informs the practice. If the practice is right, then the doctrine that goes with it must be as well. But if the doctrine is wrong, then this has serious consequences for the practice. The modern evaluation of tongues is generally influence quite heavily by our politically correct culture. Christian leaders are very soft on the practice because it is now so very popular and because they don’t want to come across as overly harsh. Well, given the current prevailing nonsense of post-modernism and a culture that believes the worse sin imaginable is to offend someone, it isn’t any wonder that men no longer thunder the truth. Polemics are not en vogue.